标签： Guyana

A brutal early-morning attack has left a 7-year-old boy dead and a 72-year-old female pensioner hospitalised in the Essequibo region of Guyana, with local law enforcement launching a full criminal investigation into the alleged murder and attempted murder.

The incident unfolded at approximately 4:45 a.m. on Friday, 5 June 2026, at a residence in Phase 3 of the Zeelugt New Housing Scheme, located along the East Bank Essequibo. Both victims reside at the same address, authorities confirmed.

According to initial investigative details, the young victim, identified as Adriel Aftab Mohamed, lived at the property with extended family members. Roughly 20 minutes after the alleged attack, a relative arrived at the home and made the grim discovery: the 72-year-old woman suffering from visible injuries, and the young boy unresponsive inside the property.

Emergency responders quickly transported the injured pensioner to the De Kinderen Regional Hospital for urgent care. As of the latest update, her condition has been classified as stable, and she remains admitted for ongoing treatment.

Members of the Guyana Police Force’s Regional Division #3 responded promptly to the scene, launching a forensic sweep to collect evidence. Investigators documented visible injuries on the child’s body, and recovered a bladed weapon suspected to be the weapon used in the attack, which has been taken into police custody as evidence.

The child’s body was transferred to the De Kinderen Regional Hospital, where a duty doctor officially pronounced him dead on arrival. It has since been moved to Ezekiel Funeral Home, where it will remain until a post-mortem examination is conducted to determine the official cause of death.

As part of the ongoing investigation, law enforcement has interviewed multiple persons of interest connected to the case. Investigators have also confirmed that closed-circuit television cameras are operational in the area surrounding the attack site, and footage from these devices is currently being reviewed to identify potential leads. Police are currently working to track down the suspect responsible for the violence, with the investigation still active and evolving.

Guyana police have confirmed three fatalities following a high-impact head-on collision between two passenger vehicles on Madia Farm Public Road in Corentyne, Berbice, that occurred on a Tuesday afternoon. Authorities released the official update on Thursday, June 4, 2026.

All three victims were passengers and the driver of the first vehicle, registered under licence plate PLL 4312. They have been identified as 23-year-old Priyas Mursalin from Chesney Front, 16-year-old Porshatam Hoolasia from Port Mourant, and 19-year-old Ameer Khan from John Village – all communities located along the Corentyne coast.

The second involved vehicle, carrying registration number PAL 9292, was operated by a 44-year-old male resident of Miss Phoebe, another Corentyne community. Preliminary investigative findings from police paint a clear picture of the chain of events that led to the crash.

According to witness and initial evidence accounts, the PAL 9292 vehicle was traveling westbound in the southern traffic lane when the incident unfolded. Meanwhile, PLL 4312 was moving eastbound at an excessive speed, when its driver attempted to overtake a slower moving vehicle ahead. This maneuver pulled PLL 4312 directly into the oncoming path of PAL 9292, triggering a catastrophic head-on collision in the southern driving lane.

The force of the crash propelled the PLL 4312 vehicle off the roadway, where it collided a second time with a concrete utility pole owned and operated by Guyana Power and Light (GPL), located along the southern shoulder of Madia Farm Public Road.

First responders rushed all people inside PLL 4312 to the nearby Port Mourant Public Hospital for emergency care. However, on arrival, examining medical providers pronounced all three occupants dead from their injuries. The driver of the second vehicle sustained only minor injuries in the crash, received on-site treatment from medical staff, and was subsequently taken into police custody for procedural questioning.

In a key update, law enforcement officials confirmed that a standard breathalyzer test administered to the PAL 9292 driver returned no traces of alcohol, ruling out impairment as a contributing factor from that side of the collision. Investigations remain ongoing as authorities work to finalize their full report on the crash.

A Guyanese construction worker has been formally arraigned on a charge of murdering his own mother, in a case that has drawn local attention to the small West Coast Demerara community of Cornelia Ida. The defendant, 24-year-old mason Greedesh Ramkissoon, whose residential address is listed as Lot 80, Block ‘Y’, Cornelia Ida, appeared before the Leonora Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday, June 3, 2026, to face the indictable homicide charge.

According to official statements from the Guyana Police Force, the fatal incident that led to the charge took place at the shared family residence on Thursday, May 28, 2026. The victim was identified as 58-year-old Surujdai Kahrui, who worked as a workplace supervisor. Ramkissoon was taken into police custody days after the killing, and formal charges were officially filed against him on May 29, 2026.

During Wednesday’s arraignment hearing, Magistrate Rabindra Singh presided over the proceeding and read the full murder charge aloud to the defendant. Under Guyana’s criminal procedural rules for indictable offenses, Ramkissoon was not required to enter a formal plea at this early court stage. Following the brief hearing, the magistrate ordered that Ramkissoon be remanded into state custody at a prison facility, with no bail granted.

The case has been scheduled for its next procedural hearing on Friday, August 7, 2026, when further developments in the legal process are expected to unfold. Local law enforcement has not yet released additional details about the alleged motive or circumstances surrounding the killing, as the investigation remains ongoing through the pre-trial phase.

On Tuesday, June 2, 2026, Guyana’s Minister of Finance Ashni Singh provided an updated progress report on the country’s landmark universal cash grant initiative, announcing that close to 400,000 Guyanese have already received their one-time GY$100,000 payment, most through direct deposits to registered bank accounts. The government has also put in place tailored alternative distribution mechanisms to ensure no eligible resident is left behind, including those without formal bank accounts, disabled people, homebound shut-ins, and communities in remote hinterland regions.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the national Local Content Summit, Singh emphasized that the program’s rollout has exceeded early expectations given the ambitious timeline and scale of the initiative. “I think we’ve done extremely well because we’ve been able to register and pay now close to 400,000 persons, which is quite a large number if you consider the speed with which this has been done,” Singh noted.

Funded by a GY$60 billion allocation earmarked in the 2026 national budget, this universal cash grant program marks the first time the Guyanese government has distributed public benefit payments through direct bank deposits to recipients who registered via a national online portal. According to Singh, direct bank transfers have emerged as the most efficient delivery channel, with the overwhelming majority of processed payments going through this method.

To address gaps in access, the government has launched targeted outreach campaigns for populations that cannot use direct bank deposits. Singh confirmed that inter-ministerial teams from the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Human Services have already been deployed to hard-to-reach regions including Region 7 (Cuyuni-Mazaruni) and Region 9 (Upper Takatu-Upper Essequibo), where workers are conducting in-person registration and using alternative delivery methods to get grants to local residents. The two ministries are also collaborating closely to coordinate home delivery of payments for disabled people and people with severe illness who are unable to leave their homes.

Singni stressed that lack of a bank account, or even unwillingness to use a bank account, will not disqualify any eligible resident from receiving the grant. “We continue to try to explain to people that this [direct deposit] is the easiest way to get your cash grant, but we also assure you that if you don’t have a bank account and you don’t want a bank account, you’re not going to be denied your cash grant,” he said, noting that the government prioritized processing bank account holders first to streamline the early rollout.

The program did encounter some early technical challenges with the online registration portal, which Singh attributed to the unexpectedly high volume of users attempting to sign up in the first days of the registration window. However, he was quick to praise the work of local technology specialists at the National Data Management Authority, who built the registration portal endogenously and quickly resolved the early issues. After rolling out real-time adjustments to improve the system’s capacity to handle high traffic, Singh noted the portal has functioned smoothly, facilitating direct bank payments for more than 300,000 recipients to date.